Turbine Aerothermal Optimization Using Evolution Strategies

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Abstract

The use of adaptive optimizers in turbine blade geometry design is discussed. Many different adaptive optimizers have been applied to turbine blade design in the past, but often the optimizer does not fit the problem and unnecessary constraints are implemented. This work analyzes the popular choices for turbine blade optimization, select the most fitting optimizer that will lead to the lowest number of constraints, and apply it to an airfoil optimization problem for validation. After validation, the optimizer is used in a turbine blade optimization problem considering aerodynamics and convective heat transfer in the objective function. The algorithm uses a 2D Navier-Stokes blade-to-blade analysis to evaluate the effectiveness of the solution encoding and optimizer performance. By using a highly effective optimizer for the specified problem, the computation time is drastically reduced while producing comparable or better results, and these benefits will also allow the use of a higher fidelity analysis without excessive computational costs.